The Power of the Internet Meme: Dogecoin

Who doesn’t love a good doge?

This is evidently the sentiment behind a previously low-end altcoin called Dogecoin, which has seen its market cap breach $1 billion for the first time since its creation in 2013. Thursday gave this digital currency its first experience surpassing $0.01 and, according to CoinMarketCap, it is now currently going for $0.010609 with a market cap of $1.2 billion. It’s seen an 8.02% increase in the past 24 hours.

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Dogecoin was never meant to be a serious thing. It’s based on the Internet meme doge, a Shiba Inu dog, and has the classic cult following experienced by many popular memes. This, in part, may be what is contributing to the altcoin’s success at the moment – that it’s not serious investors who are getting involved, but merely supporters of doge. But Dogecoin has literally only just started to take off, and doge has been popular for a long time already, so meme power can’t be all that’s powering this cryptocurrency.

Some, such as Dave Chapman, the managing director at Hong Kong-based commodities and digital assets trading house Octagon Strategy, claim that Dogecoin’s recent surge, along with the other surges being seen by other altcoins lower down on the spectrum, is a result of people wanting to get involved with crypto but being put off by the high price of the bigger ones, like Bitcoin (currently going for $17,041.20) and Ethereum (at $989.57). Sure, they could buy Bitcoin and Ethereum in bits for a cheaper price, but most people find it much more appealing to own an entire thing rather than just a part of it – what would you rather have, a whole pie, or just a bite? This could explain why cheaper altcoins like Ripple (going for $3.07) and now Dogecoin are starting to experience their glory days.

I’d prefer to think, though, that the vast majority of people who own Dogecoin own it because of its link to the Internet meme. Honestly, that’s better than owning it because they hope to make money off of it – because how much higher can a parodic altcoin based off a meme really go?

In today’s edition of crypto news, we’ll cover OKEX’s latest addition to its customer-to-customer platform and IBM’s new blockchain patents. Crypto news has been a bit slow this week, in regards to big announcements but …